The Broward Medical Examiners Office confirmed Sunday that remains found at Alligator Alley were from a human skull, according to a news release issued by the Broward Sheriff's Office.

The remains were found Saturday by two fishermen at the boat ramp on I-75 at mile marker 37.5 in western Broward. Before the Medical Examiner's report, investigators were not sure if the remains were from a human or animal.

The sex and age of the head were not release Sunday because the incident is still under investigation, the release said.

Broward Sheriff's Office investigators said they were treating the case as a death investigation. On Sunday, BSO divers searched canals in the area looking for evidence.

(08/20/07) MASTIC (NY) - A dismembered head discovered in a Florida canal has been identified as belonging to a Mastic woman.
The Broward County Sheriff's Department in Florida put out a sketch earlier this summer, after a female's head was found in a Waldbaum's shopping bag in April. According to officials, DNA tests confirmed the woman as 41-year-old Lorraine Hatzkorzian. Officials said the Waldbaum's bag helped them pinpoint their search, because Waldbaum's stores are only on Long Island.
Veda Coleman, of the Broward County Sheriff's Department, said they received a break in the case when Douglas Stein informed them his two roommates, 33-year-old Paul Bryan Trucchio and 39-year-old Robert Mackey, had bragged about "murdering a white female and dumping her body parts in Florida."
Trucchio and Mackey were charged with first-degree murder. They are being held in a Volusia County, Fla., jail without bond.
Hatzkorzian lived on Southaven Avenue in Mastic with her mother and sister.

thanks for the additional links! Sorry I didn't realize I forgot to paste the text in.
Can you believe that a Waldbaum's supermarket bag is the defining clue in this case? I wonder how many other people unfortunately have met the same fate ? MG

http://www.news12.com/LI/topstories/article?id=199001
(08/20/07) MASTIC - A dismembered head discovered in a Florida canal has been identified as belonging to a Mastic woman.
The Broward County Sheriff's Department in Florida put out a sketch earlier this summer, after a female's head was found in a Waldbaum's shopping bag in April. According to officials, DNA tests confirmed the woman as 41-year-old Lorraine Hatzkorzian. Officials said the Waldbaum's bag helped them pinpoint their search, because Waldbaum's stores are only on Long Island.
Veda Coleman, of the Broward County Sheriff's Department, said they received a break in the case when Douglas Stein informed them his two roommates, 33-year-old Paul Bryan Trucchio and 39-year-old Robert Mackey, had bragged about "murdering a white female and dumping her body parts in Florida."
Trucchio and Mackey were charged with first-degree murder. They are being held in a Volusia County, Fla., jail without bond.
Hatzkorzian lived on Southaven Avenue in Mastic with her mother and sister.

I can't find anything that says when this woman went missing. As grisly as it sounds, at least her family has part of her to bury.

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SewingDeb posted a link to her picture on August 25th. Under the picture is a link back to the story. There it states that her mother reported her missing April 21st and the head was found in Florida April 28th.

Paul Trucchio and Robert Mackey were charged in 2007 in Florida. Trial is still in the hearings stage. Apparently it's quite a circus:

And now one of the men is saying he shouldn't be on trial in Florida at all. Robert Mackey sent me copies of letters he wrote to a New York legal aid office in, which he claims "This murder is 100 percent impossible to have occurred outside of NY." Mackey says Trucchio did it. "I have proof in his writing" and he says he knows where her remains are located that "I can solve this matter."
Mackey wants New York to take the case and give him immunity. Then says he'll tell where to find the rest of Lori's body.
Mackey's attorney has argued this should be a New York case and that a head is not considered a body so there can be no murder case.
As you might expect, that has horrified the victim's family detective champagne would like nothing better than to return Lori's remains to them.
Detective Scott Champagne: "We have a victim. We have a young woman who was brutally murdered. She was dismembered. She was disposed of."
Meanwhile, Mackey maintains he is not a violent person.
Robert Mackey: "I said absolutely to acknowledge that I heard you OK? This is just absurd. I need please ma'am, please, please goddammit all of you goddammit."
There's another hearing in the case next week. No trial date has been set.http://www.wsvn.com/features/articles/investigations/MI146172/

Paul Bryan Trucchio and Robert Mackey face one count each of felony murder in the first degree. Both men are currently being held in a Volusia County jail without bond. The murder arrest affidavit was served on Saturday, August 18.

The deadly deeds of Trucchio and Mackey may have gone undiscovered had it not been for the human head found floating in a canal in western Broward County along Alligator Alley at mile marker 35.7 at approximately 6:11 p.m. on Saturday, April 28, 2007. Evidence at the scene revealed that the head was originally inside a plastic grocery bag when it was thrown into the canal. The bag with &#8220;Waldbaum&#8217;s Red Tag Reduction&#8221; displayed in red letters provided BSO homicide detectives with one of their first clues to help identify the victim. Waldbaum&#8217;s stores are only located in Long Island, New York.

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On August 7, BSO homicide detectives received DNA results positively identifying the human head as belonging to Lorraine Hatzakorzian. BSO homicide detectives then traveled to New York to confirm what Hatzakorzian&#8217;s mother already knew. Her daughter had left with Trucchio and Mackey, at some point there was a disagreement, Lorraine was bound, beaten unconscious, dismembered and her body parts disposed of. So far, only Lorraine&#8217;s head has been found.

The body of Lorraine Hatzakorzian, most of it, has never been found. Exactly where she was murdered is known only to those responsible for her brutal death.

But prosecutors in Broward County know with certainty that her head was found here, floating in an Everglades canal off Alligator Alley on April 28, 2007. The bloodied plastic shopping bag that once held it was still at the scene, and the head bobbed toward an area of the canal where alligators were plentiful. There were no bite marks on the head.

At least once a day, Robert Mackey and Paul Trucchio would pray to "the alligator god" that a human head, the only evidence of the brutal murder they committed, would be devoured by a reptile in the Everglades, two witnesses told jurors Thursday.

The witnesses, former roommates of the suspects during their 2007 stay in Volusia County, said Mackey and Trucchio each confessed to murdering Lorraine Hatzakorzian, 41, dismembering her, and tossing her head into an Everglades canal, where it was discovered near a boat ramp in western Broward County on April 28, 2007. The head was the only part of the victim's body that was ever found, and even though no one knows where the victim met her demise, the location of her head resulted in a murder trial in Broward.